This is my first attempt at a radicalathon, and I dont consider myself a very good writer anyway, so here goes. Just got X-COM- Enemy Unknown. So this is my first play through, with no idea other than being aware of the concepts

Difficulty easy – I've never done an X-Com game before, and I haven't played a squad based turn based game in lit 20 odd years. Yeah I should probably have played at normal but ginne a break, I'm getting old.

Ironman mode on – no cheating, no going back. I screw up I live with it

Turorial on – Steam helpfully does not contain a manual. GG chaps.

- - -

There I was minding my own business, when suddenly I was grabbed by 3 large looking gentlemen and shoved into the back of a van. I realize this is in the fantasies of a lot of guys, but mostly they don't include having something long and hard slamming into the top of your head. When I awoke there was some bold guy sitting where I could not see his face.

“Congratulations, you have been selected to manage the first and last defense of mankind against the alien hordes”

“Uh, but I'm just a sad lifeless gamer. Wouldn't it be better for you to have a general or something...”

“Nope, that's what they would be expecting us to do. We are gonna get someone with no talent or experience to run our defenses against the alien invaders who are invading by coming in one ship at a time rather than in one massed swoop! I full invasion is what we expected so we are adapting to the situation,”

“This is a joke, righr? Candid camera?”

Well, without another word I was grabbed from behind and bundled on a transport plane First mission, sent to Germany to asses the situation, locate recon team after chopper shot down, and investigate Extraterrestrial objects. Ok this has to be a joke. I shared the joke with the Bozos sitting around the transport thingie but they didn't laugh. No sense of humour.

Anyway we land, and the bozo'z pile out, waving their plastic guns in the air. We send all the guys into cover. One of the Guys spots movement so we send the expendable token woman to check it out. She sees some guy all torn up, and she of course acts all emotional, then they hear a “help me” radio transmission from up ahead. I' tactically yell something about getting out of here, but then I feel a gun at my back. So, reassured of the rightness of the cause, I send one of the manly men to check it out

Guy runs up to cover, second guy finds a corpse but hes all steely jawed and manly about seeing some poor bastards entrails even though its far worse than the other guy. So what the hell, I prep the dumnass medal and send man no 3 to the green alien object

Guy one jumps through the window with HEROIC WINDOW SMASHING ACTION!!

Next guys demonstrates DOOR KICKING!!

TOKEN FEMALE WINDOW SMASHING!!

OH FUCK YOU MEAN THE ALIENS ARE REAL AND THE GUY WAS BEING MIND CONTROLLED??? FUK THIS I'M{Status update, the commander was briefly over come by the heroic spirit of the moment and stood up to command his soldiers better. Unfortunately being a tall guy he smashed his head off the top of the his instrument panel. 3 times. We tied him down for his own safety}

EEP 2 guys down already. I Suggext now myght be a good time to run away? Er... No

Ok then...

The token woman lobs a renade at the xenos, and then doed after getting shot in the back. The remaining guy guns down 2 more xenos. 3 xenos down. Go EARTH donthitmeagainok!

Ok then, Time to chose where my base is gonna be. Choice of america and Europe. One gives me cheap aircraft, the other cheap laps and workshops. I chose europe.

SO I meet my second officer, who is gonna do all the work I'm not qualified for. You know, everything. But I have to report to the barracks to promote my sole surviving officer for the brilliant ability not to have gotten shot at in the last mission

So this guy is a heavy. And Barrack suggests keeping him training as a heavy. Suits me.

Next I get dragged to the research labs to meed Dr Fridgid German, otherwise known as Dr. Vanhen. I chose the Alien materials project to give our guys a much needed chance at actually surviving an alien breaking wind in their general direction. And then I get dragged to mission control where I'm told to pick a place for our guys to get slaughtered next. The one we don't help will panic more, and the one we do will give us more money. He then helpfully leaves the decision up to me..

OK Time to customize the troops and give them some more manly appropriate names...

Megrim, Slayerk, Paelos and Falconner Stand ready for battle!!

Ok, this time we are doing the STEALTH approach, ok? So I send Paelos over inside the building, SlayerK the veteran climbs up the drainpipe to the roof and sprints over to some crates and takes cover, spotting 2 of the bad guys. The rest of the other too run forward into cover closer to the aliens.

Aliens respond by blowing up the crates Slayerk is hiding behind. Thats cheating!! SlayerK then shoots one alien in partial cover who dies screaming. Paelos lobs a frag grenade at the other

Rest of the squad moves up. The aliens respond by blowing up some more crates. Nooo!!!

Moving up we spot some aliens in a building. Falc takes a hit but is ok. So I move him back. Time to bring up SlayerKs rocket launcher! SlayerK takes a shot getting into position, but the rocket blows the xenos to bits, along with the house. Saving the earth by destroying large amounts of it, that's what fighting aliens is all about.

Sadly, when we get back to base, SlayerK and Falconner have been assigned to the infirmary, for 9 and 5 days respectively. But Paelos has been promoted to squaddie, under the support class. Nice!

I get a message from the council, saying well done. Thanks chaps!! And I get a new facility available, the laboratory. Cool... uh why weren't these available from the start??

Panic is spreading across Asia, which is at level 3 panic now. Ungrateful gits...

No 2 says we can now scan for activity. Cool. I press the button and then get trapped in a time distortion field and watch the earth spin, keeping me out of the way so I cant do any real damage. LETS DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN!!!

Doc Frigid demands to be allowed to carve up an alien corpse or 4 for science. I say no. And she puts a gun to my head. Nice to know I'm really the commander here, huh?

And joy to the world, more shit just came online. I'm dragged screaming to engineering, to meet Doc poker up the.. er I mean Doc Shen. I order 5 of the new armour vests we just reserched! Sweet. I then tell him to fork out some medkits as we are gonna need them.

Oh joy the council needs me to so something. Ok some woman called Anna Sing has managed to escape alien probing and could have valuable intel, possibly about new probing methods. I'm on it! With 2 of my guys still in the infirmary its time to draft some more recruits

Ok so we are sitting in downtown Japan. I look around and no civilians around. So I start moving my guys forward. Immediatly we get a vew on a human looking alien. Doc Fridged recomends we capture it. Yeah sure, I'll capture it with just a little a bit of lead poisoning.

Alien runs forward and ghost takes a hit but Megrim runs forward and puts 2 into the Alien. We then see 2 Sectoid Greys, Buth of which take a shot at my guys but miss. Ghost tryes a long range shot which takes the Greyskin down. Not to be outdone, RK47 runs behind some cars and kills his own grey.

By guys are a little spread out at this point so i cluster them up a bit and advance. We spot the girl and surprise surprise a greyappears, who decided to run right up behind where my guys were hiding. Paelos takes him out.

Anyway we finally reach Ms. Probed, and then 2 more of these aliens show up. In the ensuring firefighte Ghost takes another hit and Megrim gets poisoned, but the woman makes it back in one piece, despite takeing fire from an overwatching alien due to my ineptitude. 6 Aliens down and all guys made it back. Go team!

Medals all round. And a nice trip to the tender mercies of the infirmary for Ghost...

Council gives us another satilite. I decide to launch it over china, in the hopes of calming them down in the future. THEN they tell me that I have no interceptors in place to intercept anything we see. Well you could have told me that before. Jeez...

Oh great. Doc Fridgid wants up to capture one ALIVE. I guess she is voluntaring to go off and lasso one of then herself then, right? Of course not. And of course who has to order the construction of a jail for this, and “make the choice to reaserch some capturing weapons? Me, thats who. Sigh, Nice to feel in charge. And who gets to pay the maintanence cost of the facility...

More time warping. Hey a UFO has appeared. OH BOY WE CAN LAUNCH OUR ENTIRE FLEET OF... 1 fighter plane? So much for the entire world being behind me. Anyway we shoot down the UFO.. guess who has to go check out the wreck? You guessed it.

Well, The buildup is fairly routine at this stage. SlayerK takes a hit 4 Greys or so dead and...

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT??

Yep, alien version of Robocop has suddenly appeared. Oh joy.

It gets Paelos in the flank. And after a bunch of my shots miss I figure theres only one way to handle this. Oh Slayer!

Heh heh

And that was that. Promotions all round. And some stays in the infermery. I better tell someone to expand that place. Speaking of which, Dr Shen decides to tell me we need more interceptors and more satellites. Thank you Doc, your grasp of the situation is breathtaking.

After this things settle into a routine. I do a bomb disposal mission for the council. Signe the recruit gets the job of carrying the Arc thrower. Keep to show the boys whos boss she sneaks up right behind a Grey and shoots it, netting me a live alien which should shut Doc Experiments up for a while.

Well it did. Until she told me she wants me to bring back a Robocop... Sigh

On the plus side, The council is very satisfied with how things are going. Good times. I start excavating the underground as I think we are gonna need the space...

Ok. this is where I have to say I got totally engrossed in the game and forgot to take notes, so this is from memory and I forgot to take screenshots. Capping the Ropocop thingie proved to be surprisingly easy. Signe just walked up to it and Zapped it. I also decided to go to normal difficulty as I found I was doing really well at the missions.

Of course I got too cocky. Upon scanning the enemy chrystal we found an enemy base. Thinking that this might be a good time to train up a bunch of recruits I sent some fresh recruits lead by Paelos to the enemy base.

So... Uh, whats a chryssalid? Well there was like 6 of them charging me within a couple of turns. Total wipeout. Peolos died in a grenade blast flung by one of the recruits in a vain attempt not to become a zombie and kill the bad scary things that were about to munch munch.

Kind of disheartening. Especially since the Doc insists we have to give it another try...

So I tried building up my base. Things I found out late in this session. you can build multiple satellites at once, not build just one a month. Gee that would help. Also. it is a good idea to actually upgrade your weapons, rather than rely on the starting weapons, like I have been doing up till now. but I never had the money as I haven't been lauching satilites as I only was building them one at a time...

The wonderful entertaining death list;

Megrim died when SlayerK missed his shot at a big terminator alien and instead blew up the wall Megrim was hiding behind. Go team!

Signe was punched to death by a zombie.

Various others of you died screaming on your first mission. You know who you are.

RK47 had a close encounter with a big drone saucer thing that exploded when it was shot to bits, taking him with it.

The present situation is that I have finally gotten sense and have started arming up my guys with decent armour. I STILL haven't gotten anything other than the starter guns though but I have launched a LOT of satellites in the last 2 months so my income has risen 3 fold, so I should actually be able to afford them soon. The basic guns are still just about doing the job but they are really seeing the end of their usefulness. Oh and Egypt has left the council. boo hiss.

Turns out RK47 is still alive. I must have confused him with someone else that died a needless and painful death

Anyway heres what the global situation is like

Anyway, Yet another painless (for me) Alien abduction mission. We start off deploying around the LZ as usual.. when suddenly some terminators (or Mutons) come into view... and some GAAAH BIG MUTANT THING WITH ARMOUR AND BIG ARMS!!! It charges over. The guys think this is a good time to activate these fancy new Archangel suits and take to the skys out of reach, but the guys with just carapace armour are not so lucky. A nameless recruit (you know who you are ) Gets meaten to death, but Ghost grapples ontop of a train with his skelaton suit and Snipes the berzerker to death. In the meantime the archangel guys are doing an alien duel with some Mutons. One of the guys decides that using a medkit in mid air in front of said guys rather than flying away somewhere safe is a good plan and is promply shot dead by Mass alien fire.

Falconner is the hero of the hour, Running forward to take fire and shoot things. Then running back behind cover. With a combenation of lots of medpac usng and stratigic hiding, we whittle down the big guys to nothing without further death. Sjoln panicking and shooting at a bad guy twice killing it certainly helped.

Anyway Heres the situation at the moment. Like I said I have good satellite coverage, but I really need to make some firestorm advanced interceptors. The "send ravens one at a time to whittle down the UFO" strategy is working ok but its not good for morale.

Here's my facilities

I sell a ton of corpses to the council, and decide to invest in some weapons. Not nearly enough but at least we are starting to get some more decent gear out. And its only the 6th of the month :(

More timewarpingm more missions. Unfortunately, in an alien abduction one Falconner stands too close to a burning car which promptly explodes, smearing all over the pavement. Oops.

But hey don't worry, in the next one SlaerK and RK both wind up bleeding out on the floor and are saved by the timely arrival of Goumdroug and his Medkits. Hurray!

Stunningly, Paelos and Megrims... uh... Brothers turn up to lend a hand.

The thing is I'm stuck. To research plasma weapons I need alien alloys, and to buind better armour I need, alien alloys. I'm thinkng I might need to attempt that alien base mission again without a fully geared up team. Sigh, always something...

So, I decide to go for it. Here are our heroes!

I land as before.

I run up one side of the room. Keeping to cover.And good thing too as suddenly ED209 walks down the other side of the room.

My team start throwing shots at it with my new plasma weapons and a rocket from slayerK deals with the flanking Grays and drones. ED-209 just stands there for a turn, and I'm just thinking Gee I wonder why its just standing there, this is easy, when it suddenly unleashes a massive multiple artillery strike on my team which destroys their cover and puts almost all of them in low health. And then in the same move followed up with a Red energy beam that takes SIgne out. I EEEP loudly and am about to order a retreat when I feel the comforting cold press of the handgun against my back. Ho hum.

Anyway, more laser sniper shots and stuff put the thing down. I then spend a few more turns patching up my peeps with al ofl my medkits, and then slowly advance up the base, shooting up berserkers and Mutons and floaters on the way.

All ny guys get badly hurt, and Ghambit is literally one hitbox away from death. But we slowly and very cautiously advance, and I think the worst is over until I see a couple of big red chaos marines. I eep and sigh. I figure that gun on its hand is a heavy plasma cannon. Thankfully they don't come at me at once. One charges up a stairwell into a hail of overwatch fire.

his and some follow up shots leave it at 2 health, and Lantessa runs over with the Arcthrower and the stun succeeds. Saweet!

The remaining threats, namely a cyperdisk and another big guy hand to hand guy are dealt with by heroically shooting their ass off at long range while hiding behind stuff, but the other big guy does manage to run around a corner and put a round of plasma into Ghost. We finally run into the Sectoid commander, who dies in a hail of gunfire.

Then its off home for tea, Medals and a trip to the infirmary for almost everyone.

The base mission was really really hard, but it netted me a rich crop of alloys which I immediately set into producing laser sniper rifles, another Titan suit, some badly needed research and constructing the Psi unit the Doc Icemaiden wants us to make. All in all good times. Snag is that She also wants me to build a hyperwhatsit facility, which I figure will net me another nasty mission so I'd better gear up the troops.